Cultivated fat company Mission Barns secures $24m in funding

Cellular agriculture company Mission Barns has raised $24 million in Series A funding to scale up and commercialise its cultivated fat technology.

Based in Silicon Valley, US, Mission Barns has developed a scalable way to cultivate meat from animal cells and is focused on producing animal fat.

The company claims that the fat it cultivates delivers the mouthfeel and flavour of meat, and can be added to meat alternative products made with plant proteins.

“Time and again, we see that the addition of Mission Fat to plant proteins makes alternative meat products in any number of categories far outperform the incumbent plant-based options,” said Mission Barns CEO, Eitan Fischer.

The company has developed a number of products incorporating Mission Fat, both on its own and through collaborations with meat companies and plant protein partners.

Mission Barns’ Series A round attracted global backing from a raft of investors, including Lever VC, Gullspang Re:Food, Humboldt Fun, Green Monday Ventures and Enfini Ventures.

A number of Mission Barns’ seed investors also increased their stake in the company.

In addition to scaling up its Mission Fat technology, the firm will use the new funds to build a pilot manufacturing plant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nick Cooney, managing partner of Lever VC, said: “I’ve been sampling plant-based meats for 20 years from a huge variety of brands globally, and have never tasted anything as meat-like as products containing Mission Fat.

“This is going to be a game-changer for the alternative meat sector, because it’s going to help brands around the world have a dramatically better product almost overnight.”